A Little Bit of Family, A Whole Lot of Food, with a Little Bit of Life Thrown In.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Hooray for the Farmer's Market!!

Today I made my first foray to the Farmer's Market this season. It was so nice to be back. :-) I spent the morning smiling as I made my way from stall to stall, looking over every single item. It is so wonderful to see all the new vegetables that have been grown by all the local Hmong families. And it is all local at this market, so I know where it is grown. I love it. Since our growing season is later up here in the North, there isn't a whole lot out now, but I did manage a small haul to brighten my day. You see here a bunch of baby beets, a bunch of spring onions, and a handful of new red potatoes. I actually got two bunches of the beets, greens still intact and fresh as fresh can be. The beets became a simple side dish for our supper- both the greens and the tops. I roasted the beets in olive oil while I wilted the greens on the stovetop with a little garlic. Then I tossed the two together and topped the whole thing with nuggets of a Pyrenees Green Peppercorn Cheese that I reviewed the other day. The cheese perfectly complimented the bitterness of the greens, and the beets themselves...oh so sweet and wonderful. The onions I'm not sure what I'll be doing with. They're quite harsh... so I may hold onto them for salsa or pickles or something like that. To accompany my market basket today, Andy got it in his brain that he wanted to smoke something on his grill. A slow smoke he said. So I picked up a fresh turkey for him, and he was able to work on smoking a bird. It turned out beautiful and taste very good. It had the beginnings of a smoke ring- so a little more tweaking will be done, but really, it was quite tasty and I'm looking forward to coming up with some smokey turkey leftovery things.

He really is getting pretty good at smoking with that Weber grill. Imagine what he could do with a real smoker??!!

That's all for today. I am halfway through a rather boring book, and I would like to try and finish it tonight, so I will be off to do a bit of reading. Happy Saturday!